Jaguar is calling for a new RIM CEO to replace Lazaridis and Balsillie, and wants RIM to break up into separate public companies or be put up for sale as a whole

Just last month, two proposals were suggested in regards to the sale of RIM's intellectual propoerty as well as an executive shake-up. Now, Canadian merchant bank Jaguar Financial Corp. is pushing Research In Motion (RIM) to make some hefty changes in the way of a new chief executive and putting the company up for sale as a whole or in parts -- and its ideas are gaining support.

RIM, maker of BlackBerry, is currently run by President and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis and co-CEO Jim Balsillie. The company has had a hard time keeping up with competitors like Apple, Google, Microsoft, HTC and Samsung when it comes to mobile devices and mobile operating systems because of its slow response to a constantly-changing market. Its stock hit a "52-week low" of $19.29 on October 4 after hitting a high of $70.54 in February.

For the above-mentioned reasons, Jaguar, which has acquired more shares of RIM since the stock price began to drop, is now calling for a new RIM CEO to replace Lazaridis and Balsillie. It also wants RIM to break up into separate public companies or be put up for sale as a whole.

According to Jaguar, a minimum of 8 percent of stockholders agree with its ideas and are calling for a company shake-up as well.

"Everybody is in support of a sale of RIM or another value creative transaction...like splitting the company into separate public companies -- a network company, a device company and a patents company," said Vic Alboini, Jaguar chief executive. "It's time for RIM to bring in a transformational leader and a respected independent chairman."

But Lazaridis and Balsillie will likely not take this sitting down. Between the two, Lazaridis and Balsillie hold over 10 percent of the stock and have a crucial role in the company's decision-making as chairman of the board.

Jaguar said it has spoken to 20 of the larger institutional holders so far out of 1,000 stockholders, but plans to continue speaking to more.

"We haven't adopted a call-center approach," said Alboini. "It has been very highly targeted, but now that we've got the response, you know we are going to go out and see how many more we can get."

According to Alboini, Jaguar can call a shareholders meeting with 8 percent support, which would force RIM's board to listen to its demands.

RIM saidover 90 percent of its voting shares had supported the re-election of directors that includes Lazaridis and Balsillie during the company's annual meeting in July.

In other RIM-related news, BlackBerry services continue to be disrupted in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, and now, North America as well. The outage is going on three days now in some areas, and could affect 70 million BlackBerry users outside of North America, according to RBC analysts Mike Abramsky and Paul Treiber.

"The messaging and browser delays...were caused by a core switch failure within RIM's infrastructure," said RIM. "As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service."

RIM originally said the services were restored Tuesday, but have now said they are still working on the problem and haven't mentioned how long it would take.

The outage, which has now spread to North America as well, could negatively affect RIM competition-wise with the new iPhone 4S launching in only two days.

How can you ignore all of this info? Are you still persisting that RIM isnt in deep trouble? What about the brewing shareholders revolt? You keep talking about all the non-important stuff like Jason, trolls, other companies, and your perceived anti-RIM sentiment, and you are missing the meat.

So, then I can assume you are going to continue to deny there are issues. So lets stick with this... Lets not talk about the fact that shareholders, employees, wall street, market analysts, carriers, customers and the entire world sees RIM floundering, lets talk about Apple, MS, Google and HP. Everyone is just making up bad news about RIM to make them look bad. Marketshare dropping, revenue dropping, profit dropping, and stock dropping to a heaping 1/7th its previous value 3 years ago isnt anything to worry about because RIM is doing great! Just ask Lazaridis and Balsillie, they say it, so I know it must be true!

I never said it's all peachy for RIM and they have nothing to improve upon, they definitely have a lot to do to catch up to other smartphones fart app selection wise, but still ignoring good RIM related news and presenting only the bad ones like JM does all the time is trolling, not reporting. I just call things their names, like it or not.

"they definitely have a lot to do to catch up to other smartphones fart app selection wise"

Really? That's it? Your only example is fart apps ? Is that all RIM is lagging on? REALLY?

"ignoring good RIM related news and presenting only the bad ones like JM does all the time is trolling, not reporting."

10 bad news to 1 good news is not good news. Its nothing to report on, it IS what companies report because they want to accentuate the positive of course.

And this percieved anti-RIM thing is all in your head. Some people hate on Apple, and MS and Sony and other companies for good reason. They have all pulled some really shady unfair moves that cause contention, but RIM isnt like that. RIM is pretty straight and fair, to my knowledge they have never done any shady/unfair moves.... Why would anyone hate RIM, they get a major kudos for that. It's just reporting facts. RIM is floundering and you know it.

You still haven't addressed the brewing shareholder revolt, and you should. It will be much louder in the coming months.

What else they are lagging on? Huge screens, dual cores and LTE radios that devour battery like there's no tomorrow? Skype that's purchased by MS and is going to be WinPhone centric anyway? A couple of hyped up 3D games from Epic? What else really serious you can come up with, let's see!

quote: 10 bad news

10 reports from Jaguar clowns who no one ever heard about before or 10 reports from some illiterate reporter who previously had never heard of NFC? Is that all bad RIM news you got? REALLY?

quote: You still haven't addressed the brewing shareholder revolt

You still haven't addressed the brewing anti-Ballmer shareholder revolt either.

LOL, RIM heard of Jaguar, its a pretty large shareholder. Clowns? Of of course, they disagree with your "highly informed" assessment of RIM. What could shareholders possibly know that Pirks doesnt? Surely they are idiots and RIM is doing great. LOL

Like I said, there isnt anything more to say. We are looking at the same data, I see major problems and you see roses. I am gonna keep posting this until you answer it.

This is pointless, we have both said our piece again and again and disagree. I think RIM is headed downhill fast, and you think they are OK. There is nothing left to do but see what happens, so let’s do that bet, or are you afraid? It’s not for any money, just for "I told you so" rights.The bet: By October next year, there won’t be any way to hide behind creative data reporting and "pick and choose" facts. RIM’s numbers will be down all over, sales, marketshare, everything everywhere and it will be undeniable.

The bet: By October next year, there won’t be any way to hide behind creative data reporting and "pick and choose" facts. RIM’s numbers will be down all over, sales, marketshare, everything everywhere and it will be undeniable.

Pirks:1) the market for smartphones globally is still growing and will grow for many years,2) RIM market share is growing outside of US as well. Given these two trends it's pretty hard to believe you, because these two trends contradict your grim predictions.

1. Yes, very correct.2. Acknowleged, fine, it went up a bit. I dont think that will continue and you do.

The bet: By October next year, there won’t be any way to hide behind creative data reporting and "pick and choose" facts. RIM’s numbers will be down all over, sales, marketshare, everything everywhere and it will be undeniable.

Well, you believe the RIM growth outside the US is a temporary thing, while I don't think so because RIM has new QNX products in pipeline which should boost its marketshare even higher.

Your problem is that you consider only the current BB OS handsets and ignore their upcoming new OS and harwdare platform.

I think it is shortsighted to ignore all this, but I won't bet on QNX. I think it has a decent chance to turn things around for RIM but since I know only the rumors and no factual data I can't say how much of a chance it is, hence I won't bet. I don't bet on things I'm not 100% sure about and QNX is one of those things. It's a cat in the bag. No, no bets on it.

Hehe, I only post my opinion and I never bet on my opinion since unlike most trolls here I know I may be wrong. I'd suggest you to consider assuming same attitude. Helps a lot to be objective.

I will admit RIM is in a deep trouble not before their new QNX platform fails WORLDWIDE. Not just in the US.

Until then I don't really see a need in a new leadership. In this market conditions RIM is making the right decisions, any new leadership wouldn't do any better so what's the point in replacing Lazaridis?

You have to question the team that sat by and did nothing when Apple announced the iphone in January 2007. Even Palm, as slow as they are and broke as they were came out with WebOS 2 years later. It took RIM 4 1/2 years to come out with OS7 and even that is arguable as IOS/Android "comparable" and RIM has mega cash $$$ and experience.

Whatever happens, it will be an interesting year 2012 in the smartphone world for sure.

You know, for all the bad things you say about slow and procrastinating Lazaridis - you still won't be able to find some kind of unique visionary like Steve Jobs to replace Lazaridis, i.e. someone who can correctly predict consumer demand 5 to 10 years ahead. These people are very rare, and I'm not aware of any current smartphone company CEO who'd be better than Lazaridis at making precise forecasts Jobs-style. Therefore replacing Lazaridis will only hurt RIM since the newcomer will be just another cookie cutter CEO, not Jobs visionary at all, and hence unable to really quick pull RIM up from the pit.

Those idiots from Jaguar who scream bullshit about "replacing Lazaridis with someone else" are not interested in RIM well being at all, they only care about their stock. Give them the power to destroy RIM and thus make some profit selling their RIM stock - they will destroy RIM and make profit not even thinking about it, they will do it as a reflex, like your hand that reflectively retracts from fire when it burns, you don't even think about it. Same about the Jaguar clowns - they have their own spinal reflexes like all the mediocre/dumb investors do and you should understand that instead of presenting these morons as a pinnacle of a business acumen.

Haha, I understand why Jaguar is running around, but the problem is - these clowns will replace Lazaridis with a cookie cutter CEO who will "maximize value" by selling/destroying the company. This is as obvious to anyone as a daylight... maybe except you, then you must be one rare sad exception :))) hehe

Anyway, I'll believe clowns like Jaguar not before I see anyone else Jobs caliber, someone kind of a visionary offering his service as a RIM CEO. But this is not going to happen and you know why.

You can post Jaguar BS about replacing Lazaridis with another cookie-cutter "value maximizer" RIM-chopping-selling-profiting-quick kind of "CEO" for all you want, I've been observing industry and reading various analysts including all sort of different experts on Apple and Microsoft long enough to see through Jaguar and their kind. You should learn how industry works before passing me their well known stale BS. I know this kind of "value maximization" BS very well, won't buy it. So don't pass it to me please.

I think RIM dies off pretty quick if Lazaridis leaves. I'd rather see Lazaridis pursue his new QNX vision that seems pretty decent to me. It's much better to have RIM competing with new platform than seeing Jaguar's puppet CEO to chop it up and sell quick, don't you agree?

I see it differently. i see jaguar trying to Sell off and get some money out Before the current ceo's Lose even more of their money. They have no confidence in him and you can't blame them. They sat by and did almost nothing while the stock drop 7x. If you know anything about business you know how incredibly awful that is. Investors matter and it's all part of success

If you invested in company and they tanked - it is YOUR fault. You should be grown up enogh to understand that stock investments are pure gamble, it's all 100% luck and nothing else. So if you invested and then lost big or won big - it is only you to blame and no one else. Buyer beware - ever heard this?

Speaking of selling off RIM in order to stop losing money - this is akin to selling Apple stock in 90's - you will stop losing your money but you will also lose all the prospects of the long term gain that could be huge. All the idiot Jaguars who sold their Apple stock in 90's now cry and pull their hair off while the smart ones who did not listen to Jaguars and Dells screaming SELL APPLE NOW literally swim in money.

In other words it may be safe bet to sell the old company that does not want go change, but seling a company that's about to introduce first groundbreaking major product redesign since their inception as a smartphone company? How stupid is that? While Jaguar morons run around providing laughing material for reporters and trolls like JM the serious smart investors took the only approach that smart investor could take - wait and see if RIM's new platform succeds or not. ONLY THEN those smart investors will take the action by ousting Lazaridis, if his new platform fails.

So let the Jaguar clowns to entertain us while the big new platform rollout is upon us. It's gonna be fun! QNX is a top notch OS with uber excellent development toolkits, to top it the PlayBook hardware and especially UI beats iPad IMHO, so this new platform is no joke even without handsets. Observe Jaugar clowns dirty holes plugged for good when the handsets with new OS are unleashed.

The point is after the iphone was announced in january 2007 it took rim 4 and a half years to answer. That's not luck that's not a gamble thats incompetence , gross incompetence. You can think what you want though.

The problem is that the new cookie cutter CEO is likely to be even less competent than Lazaridis. Like I said you can't find anyone better than him at the moment, there are no visionaries on the market. Hence the only thing you can do is to either sell RIM now and get a little money or wait and potentially get much more money later after QNX platform becomes a success.

In other words, the damage is already done, at this point you may as well hang on and hope to recoup some of the lost money. I suppose that makes sense... still not a whole lot of confidence inthe CEO, RIM or its future

I too did not have confidence in RIM just like you... until I tried my Playbook and my new Torch 9860. These two nice gadgets were enough to somewhat raise my confidence in RIM's future.

Stuff they were making before Playbook and BB OS 7 was junk, I agree, but now they are moving in the right direction so I can't honestly say I believe the doom and gloom. I used to but now I'm more careful with all that negativity. Especially after reading a LOT of technically incompetent and illiterate "reviews" of the new RIM products where agenda of the "reviewers" was pretty clear.

I trust Anand the most among all the reviewers I read (ok Peter Bright and John Siracusa are very good but still... Anand is the best) and Anand wrote in his Playbook review that the RIM's browser was the best among all the tablet browsers he tested, the closest to full desktop browsing experience you can get on an ARM tablet. Including Apple's ones. I trusted his review, got myself a Playbook and never got disappointed (probably because I use Gmail and thus never ever needed a standalone mail client... in like 5 years or so, seriously) then I got myself some more BB OS 7 gear and found out that it's actually real nice gear, not the ideal but not the bad horrible slow etc experience it used to be a year ago, when RIM hardware was unbelievably outdated. Not anymore.

Well, this kind of explains why I don't believe into doom and gloom reviews for now. First, I found too many lies and illiteracy in those reviews, people often have absolutely no idea what they are writing about. Second, my own experience with new RIM gadgets also suggests it's too early to write RIM off. The company is changing, moving in the right direction by dropping their old OS and their old horribly underpowered hardware, and replacing them with something totally new and exciting. I'm sure the big investors will wait for the big QNX platform debut before deciding whether to sell RIM or not, they definitely understand all this too. Jaguar can eat shit. Just like Apple investors ate shit in 90's. Shit happens, it's capitalism man.

I actually just tried a playbook in a local staples an hour ago. It's OK. I like the WebOS ish flickiness of it. Not bad.

Here is the problem. Lets say it comes out on some phones and like WebOS is comparable to Android and iOS. Most independant reviewers like WebOS even better and rate it higher than Android and IOS. So lets say RIM achieves that as a goal. Look what happened to WebOS. Not good things. It has to stand out.

Hey you didn't notice that WebOS tablet that HP made was molasses slow, this is why consumers were not buying it. I tried it in store on the day it was released and immediately realized it was dead on arrival. Playbook experience in store was head and shoulders above. This explains why WebOS died quick and Playbook survived, albeit not excelled in sales because gazillions of Apple biased reviewers rated it down. Well, Anand was not Apple biased and it showed in his Playbook review but how many real smart reviewers like Anand do we have? None at all, very very rare.

Anyway, I can't really say that these days any of the smartphones and tablets really "stand out" as you say. They are all very similar, Apple and Android are clones of each other, now MS joined the fun and it's also kind of standing out if you wish by the original UI, but does this standing out help MS to sell a lot of WP7? Not at all. Same with RIM, their QNX may stand out like MS stand out with Metro UI, still MS sees abysmal sales and RIM may too, so standing out does not help. There are other factors besides standing out, like growing markets, customer loyalty, proper retail sales preparation, proper sales incentives and commission for the cellular stores salesmen and many other factors that affect sales. Apple for example has very powerful retail chain and because of that it does not need to stand out. Google probably pays good commission to cellular salesmen and does not have to stand out. MS can leverage maybe integration with Xbox and Windows 8 to avoid the need to stand out, and RIM may just exploit their current loyal customer base and growing market outside of the US to stay afloat without the need to stand out.

I mean if so many companies survive without standing out (that includes Apple because iPhone these days definitely does not stand out at all) I don't see why RIM can't do this. It's not like smartphone market is shrinking so there will be place for RIM too as the market grows. This reason alone I think should be enough to keep RIM alive. If they don't stand out but don't fuck up like they used to with ancient outdated OS and hardware a couple of years ago - they should be okay, not growing wild but kind of profitable enough to keep Jaguar happy. They just need time to get QNX devices out.